An Unreasonable Man

Karl Rove Profile in Vanity Fair November 4, 2006

Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair’s National Editor, just published a well written article about his neighbor, Karl Rove. I hope you’ll read it. It seems to be a pretty fair picture of the guy. Purdum regularly runs into Rove at neighborhood parties and such, so I’m sure he’s trying to be as accurate as he can to avoid alienating his neighbor. Overall, its a pretty humanizing look at somebody informed democrats view as a demon running amok, and informed republicans have to admit is not the best role model for their kids. Personally, I am not a fan.

Rove is an easy person to dislike. By his own account, his primary political strategy is to divide. Increasing polarization is one of his stated goals. The books and articles I’ve read about him also detail a long list of disturbing tactics he’s used against the opposition. Spreading lies is a recurring theme. He also likes to attack the opposition’s strengths, which I find particularly repulsive.

The 2000 Republican Primaries are a textbook example. After John McCain trounced Bush in New Hampshire:

Rove and Bush move on to the South Carolina primary, where they run a much tougher campaign, questioning McCain’s commitment to pro-life policies, baiting him into going off message, and co-opting his own image as a reformer. In South Carolina, McCain faces a brutal whispering campaign about his mental health, his wife’s admitted battle with a dependency on prescription drugs and whether he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. (The McCains had adopted a Bangladeshi child from Mother Teresa’s orphanage.) Bush, whose campaign denies any role in the rumors, wins by a wide margin in South Carolina, and by March, McCain is out of the race.

Rove seems like a caricature of all that’s wrong with politics to me. Maybe someone will tell me that he buys lots of Girl Scout cookies and once rescued a cat from a tree. Purdum tried to make him somewhat like-able in this article, but the best he could muster was that he saw Rove “stop and tenderly take the arm of an Iraq-war veteran” on his way to a speech, and Rove picked up Purdum’s newspapers when he was away on a trip. Granted, those don’t seem to be the actions of a demon running amok, but I sure hope my kid doesn’t grow up to be like him either.